Initially introduced to connect two points across the ocean, submarine cable networks became more flexible with the introduction of optical add-drop multiplexers (OADM). OADMs used in optical communication networks are capable of removing wavelength channels from multiple wavelength signals and adding channels to those signals. Conventional OADMs have typically been limited to use in a relatively few nodes within a network because of their inherent performance characteristics. In other words, as the number of conventional OADMs increases within the network, the imitations associated with conventional OADMs substantially affects network performance.